January Emails

Learn how horizontal drilling affects the environment, the truth about trees on the ocean floor, biggest mistake companies make when trying to sell to oil & gas companies, that real estate is more dangerous than oil & gas, why reps struggle to close and much more.

Transcript of Session –

Hey, folks. Let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry.

[Music]

All right. It’s that time. We’re going to do e-mails and these are January e-mails.

First one. How does horizontal drilling effect the environment?

So, horizontal drilling actually is very environmental friendly. In the old days twenty years ago or so, they would have drilled multiple well sites to take the same amount of oil after off the ground and probably would have impacted about 100 acres with about 20 well sites.

Now, with one well, they originally start out at 5 acres site and then when they go to production they reduce it to 2 acres, you get the same amount of oil and gas out of the ground. So horizontal drilling is much more environmentally friendly than the way that we used to do it.

Number two. Is it true that oil companies plant trees on the ocean floor?

So, either you’ve been smoking crack or you’ve heard something and got it misconstrued. So there is something called a subsea tree and a subsea tree is based upon the land tree that they use to control well flows and pressures. And in the old days, it look like a Christmas tree. We’ll put a picture up for you. So, it got the name Christmas tree.

Well, they use the same type of devices tree on the ocean floor for the deep water wells, but it doesn’t look anything like a Christmas tree, but they still call it a tree, it’s called subsea tree and we’ll show you one going in.

So, hopefully that’s where you got it and you weren’t doing drugs or something.

What mistakes do you see companies make when trying to sell to the oil and gas company?

I see this on a weekly basis. They have a great idea, they’re in some other country, they go, we’ll go to Houston, open an office, hire oil and gas salesmen and the money just flows in. Eh-eh, it doesn’t happen. The biggest mistakes companies make, they don’t do they research and not only figure out where their spot is in the market, but who has the problem their product or solution fixes and what is the value of that problem. If you don’t do that upfront, you’re going to fail.

Number four. I heard that oil and gas industry is a very dangerous place to work. What gives?

So maybe a long time ago that was true. I’m going to put up some statistics from the Bureau of Labor Management, but as of today 2014, working on oil and gas industry is actually safer than working in real estate. Yes, you heard me right. It’s safer to work in the oil and gas industry than to work in real estate. So this is a very safe industry to working in.

Number five. My reps do a great job with delivering opportunities, but they struggle closing. Any thoughts?

Yeah. Salespeople are naturally optimistic, so I suspect a lot of these opportunities aren’t really opportunities. You need to get a lot of buy in from a customer upfront and that includes price, right? A lot of sales guy don’t want to talk price, they’re worried about scaring off the customer. If you scare off the customer with your price, then you know what? It’s not an opportunity, they will not become a customer. So, if you’ll address that making sure you get a lot of buy in from the clients upfront and have the price discussions upfront, you’ll see your number of opportunities shrink, but I guarantee your closing ratio will go through the roof.

Number six. What the hell is going on in Texas and Louisiana? Every welder and pipefitter I know is either on their way there or there already.

Yeah. It’s hot here in Texas and Louisiana for 2014. We have a $116 billion worth of CAPEX projects already approved. They are starting construction. So, all those skilled trades like you said welder, pipefitters, machinist are headed this way. So, it’s good, it’s good for us.

Number seven. How much gasoline and diesel can we actually get from a barrel of oil?

All right. So, barrel of oil is 42 gallons. From that 42 gallons, we get 19 to 20 gallons of gasoline, we get 9 gallons of diesel, we get 4 gallons of jet fuel, another 8 or 9 gallons of various things that we use day to day various distillates.

So, there we go, we went through the January e-mails. I hope this helped. We will see you next time.